Q: The building next to Catching Fireflies on Detroit St. has two odd back doors far above Fifth Ave.: if anyone stepped out of them, they would plunge to the sidewalk. What gives?

A. Ann Arbor is blessed with a number of expert architectural historians, and they don’t agree in their conjectures about this door. The doors may have provided access for a long-gone porch or outside stairway, but it was also not unusual for Victorian-era commercial buildings to have lifting doors on upper floors. Stairways were steep and narrow, so it was often easiest to hoist goods up to elevated doorways.

Until a few years ago, the Anson Brown Building at Broadway and Pontiac Tr. had a beam installed above an upper-floor door for that purpose. It extended over the sidewalk, and the city, concerned about the safety of passing pedestrians, asked owner Jim Koli to remove it. Koli complied–but says that it was made of oak, and still quite sound when he took it down.

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